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Business accounting goes mobile1

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Business Accounting Goes MobileAccording to research firm Strategy Analytics, the number of active smartphones toppedone billion in 2012, and they estimate that this number will double by 2015. Mobile devicesarecompact and convenient, and users increasingly rely on them for the majority of basictasks, including professional usage. The most effective accounting software offersaccessible, real-time reporting ofemployee work and related costs.But the definition of “accessible” ischanging; soon it won’t be enoughfor users to access informationonly on company desktops.Information has to be availableon-demand – by which I mean, onmobile devices.Several top companies alreadyoffer mobile applications forsmartphones and tablets.QuickBooks, the top accountingsoftware solution among smallbusinesses, offers QuickBooksMobile for the iPad, iPhone, and Android. This application allows users to easily viewcustomer information, send professional invoices, and mark invoices as paid. The data onMobile QuickBooks syncs back with QuickBooks on the desktop, and visa versa.Microsoft Office offers a similar application for the Windows Phone, allowing users tocreate, open, and edit Excel workbooks. And Microsoft Dynamics offers a mobileapplication forDynamics CRM.So, how useful are these applications? First of all, it has become clear that mobileintegration has its limitations. For example, Excel Mobile doesn’t support all of thefunctions of Microsoft Excel. Unsupported content cannot be displayed or edited,potentially limiting the application’s usability. There’s also the intrinsic limitationsimposed by the smartphone’s smaller screen size, which makes viewing and editing largedocuments difficult and unwieldy.To minimize these problems, companies can center their application building on the mostpopular features. Most users don’t need smartphones to do complex configurations of theiraccounting software. Instead, the vast majority of user activity is devoted to enteringemployee time, approving time entered, and running reports. These basic activities can bespecifically tailored for smartphones.Reference Link: http://technorati.com/technology/article/business-accounting-goes-mobile/